laurelsblue

[laurelsblue]

Poking at a fic dealing with the aftermath of Elwing’s arrival on the Vingilote and the crew’s reaction. Still not fully settled on Falathar’s age or backstory.

I did figure out that Aerandir is a not-so-secret Avari on a mission though.

[starblaster]

i love having mutuals who are the authority on a specific fictional character

[starblaster]

new ask game: mutuals, tell me what fictional characters you consider me an expert on

[laurelsblue]

I kind of have to wonder - if Eldibus was Zodiark’s ‘heart’, does Hydaelyn have one too?

[laurelsblue]

That scene with the twins after arriving in Sharlayan is so nice. Their character arcs have been some of my favourite in FFXIV.

Though I barely remember anything about them in ARR except when they first appeared, I thought they were going to be villains.

[laurelsblue]

Did Alliance roulette today and my alliance had a dancer called Elu Thingol.

[laurelsblue]

@squirrelwrangler said: !!! I only get Feanorians (and a lot of Stormlight Archive and thankfully some Wheel of Time) 

I’ve seen an Indis Vanyar before and an Idril something.

[laurelsblue]

Saw a samurai called Hamfast Tuckborough today.

[laurelsblue]

Did Alliance roulette today and my alliance had a dancer called Elu Thingol.

[laurelsblue]

@squirrelwrangler said: !!! I only get Feanorians (and a lot of Stormlight Archive and thankfully some Wheel of Time) 

I’ve seen an Indis Vanyar before and an Idril something.

[laurelsblue]

Did Alliance roulette today and my alliance had a dancer called Elu Thingol.

[laurelsblue]

AU where Iminye is Elenwe.

AU where Elenwe is Rivendell!Glorfindel.

What if I combined them...?

Elrond has no idea what to do with Great-Grandma hanging around. Galadriel suddenly understands exactly why Indis was so weird about Turgon’s marriage. Iminye just does whatever. Sometimes she wanders off into the woods for months, and everyone has no idea where she’s gone, but when she gets back, apparently she told someone who forgot to tell anyone. Sometimes she holes up in the library for a week working on a new proof. It’s wild.

Elladan and Elrohir’s favourite game is inventing increasingly unlikely roles for her whenever a visitor asks who she is. She’s been everything from the overseer of the mushroom harvest to the guardian of the horseshoes.

[laurelsblue]

Playing around with a dollmaker for an AU Earendil/Elwing daughter, tentatively named Elanor.

I always found it interesting that Earendil and Elwing broke the two sons, then a daughter pattern of the peredhil line, but maybe if they’d had a bit longer in Sirion, they would have had a daughter too.

Quick headcanons:

Survived Sirion by being hidden and ended up with Cirdan and Gil-galad afterwards. Doesn’t really remember her family and has severe claustrophobia as a result of being hidden.

Chose to be an elf and sailed to Valinor to reunite with her parents. Frequently visited Numenor to see Elros.

Looks the most like Earendil and does actually enjoy sailing.

[laurelsblue]

[fic] Letters

Vardamir learns something from his mother.

For Day 1 of @numenorweek.

Vardamir races down the hallway, passing amused servants. His mother promised that she would spend time with him after his lessons with his tutor. The door to his mother's study is open but he knows he has to knock first. His parents are very insistent about things like this.

He can hear voices from inside but they stop after his first impatient knock. Aunt Ildiko peers round the door at him and his fist falls, unsure. Is Mother busy?

“You can come in, Vardamir,” his mother calls. “Ildiko was just leaving.”

Aunt Ildiko says something in that language she and Mother share, and Mother laughs. She does leave though, and Vardamir goes in.

His mother's seated at her desk in the corner but she turns to look at him, putting down her pen.

“Come over here, I want to show you something.”

He goes over to the desk, proud that he's tall enough to see the top without help. His mother still moves the paper closer to the edge anyway. There's something odd about it though.

“That's not tengwar!”

He'd thought tengwar was the only way of writing. Master Rumil certainly hadn't mentioned that there was anything else.

She smiles faintly at his confusion.

“It is not. This is cirth, the script of your father's people. I am writing a letter to your grandmother across the sea.”

Vardamir traces the sharp, angular lines, finger hovering just above them, with a sense of wonder. Another way of writing!

“Would you like me to teach you?”

He doesn’t even think about it.

“Yes!”

[laurelsblue]

Somehow my headcanon about Elenwe being Iminye’s daughter grew an AU where she’s actually Iminye herself.

...No, I don’t know how it works but let’s just say Turgon introducing her to his family was exactly as interesting as you’d imagine.

[laurelsblue]

@squirrelwrangler said:                                                                                        WAIT, laurel, what server are you on? (also, SpyxFamily is <3)

Louisoix, it’s on one of the European data centers but can’t remember which.

I didn’t know you were into it too!                     

[laurelsblue]

Tagged by @squirrelwrangler.

Rules: tag nine people you want to get to know better or catch up with, then answer these questions. 

Three ships: have some recent favourites. Canon romantic - Loid/Yor (SpyxFamily), canon platonic - Nanamo and Raubahn (FFXIV), and noncanon crack - Elmo’s wife/Olwe’s wife’s mother (Silmarillion). (I know stuff happens with Nanamo and Raubahn but I haven’t finished Heavensward yet so please don’t spoil it.)

Last song: ...probably Brave Heart by Miyazaki Ayumi. It’s part of the original  Digimon OST and I’ve been on a Digimon kick since the reboot of the original series started.

Last movie: Digimon: Last Evolution Kizuna.

Currently craving: more of that marmalade cake I made Thursday.

Currently reading: haven’t been reading books much lately. Got a long trip soon so I’ll probably take a couple for that.

Tagging whoever wants to do it.

[laurelsblue]

Assorted headcanons: elven ladies edition

Ailin (Olwe’s wife) was the inspiration for the Mirror of Galadriel.

Amarie speaks Sindarin with a slight Beorian accent.

Anaire remains Queen of the Noldor even after Earwen’s reconciliation with Finarfin.

Celebrian ranks places in Valinor by resident relatives.

Earwen visited Numenor because Elwing couldn’t.

Elenwe was a siege engineer in the War of Wrath.

Elwing makes sets of wings for her close family. (She started the set for Celebrian as soon as she heard she was coming.)

Enel(ye) holds the record for remaining coherent as a houseless spirit.

Iminye works in the Gardens of Este helping the Reborn adjust.

Melian became a maia of Nienna after her death.

Mithrellas visited Dol Amroth once after Imrazor's death before she sailed.

Nerdanel is a descendant of Tatie.

Nimloth lives with Mithrellas in Valinor. (They co-founded the ‘I married a mortal and all I got was his grave’ club.)

[laurelsblue]

Can’t believe my blog is ten years old now.

[bertholdt-fubar]

message me a character and i'll tell you five headcanons i have about them

[laurelsblue]

Six reasons people became Avari:

1. Why would you trust the powerful and mysterious being you met in the woods? Does no one else remember the Dark One?

2. Actually we really like these woods, and if you have got rid of the Dark One, staying here should be safe.

3. Honestly we’d prefer to explore, now that we don’t have to worry about vanishing.

4. Elwe and Finwe who?

5. Not really sure about this whole ‘travel’ thing.

6. Wait, where did everyone else go?

[kazaera]

I will never not reblog Avari stuff!! And… yeah, one of the reasons I am fairly pro-Avari is that there are so many good, understandable reasons to go “uh you are a strange vaguely-person-shaped thing telling us we should up and move to some paradise involving weird glowing trees where the dead come back to life? How about… no.” It always bugs me that neither Tolkien, nor any of the Eldar, nor the fandom in general seem to give the Avari much credit. :/

For the record, in my ‘verse #3 are definitely the Kinn-lai and #2 are the Penni. #1 are proobably the Cuind (who later run into a Dwarven clan at a formative point in their development and end up with this spectacular merged mythology featuring Mahal as the creator of the universe and Oromelkor as a jealous spirit who stole the Elves’ afterlives from them), but possibly others too bc there’s more than one Avari clan who consider the Valar malevolent post-Sundering. Hwenti are either #4 or #6, not sure about Windan or Kindi.

…man, now I want to come back to the Valinorean Avari Adventures series, possibly featuring Tahjul the accidental kidnappee and her attempts at introducing these backwards Eldar to good Hwenti-style direct democracy.

[laurelsblue]

You are my main inspiration for Avari stuff. It’s a niche corner but I’m glad you’re in it too. To be honest, one of my main frustrations with Tolkien fandom is that outside of the popular characters/periods, it’s incredibly hard to find any fanwork. There are thousands of years of history and a whole world it’s happening in, yet so little of it gets explored. Do I have to write all the relationship between Cirion and Eorl’s wives fic myself?

#1 will probably end up being for the Penni, I think although #4 was my first thought for them. It ties into Enel(ye) and Thingol’s complicated history with each other which is my attempt to answer what happened to Enel, Tata, Tatie and Thingol’s parents. Also the reason the Penni left Cuivienen in the end which in turn ties into why Thranduil’s wife side-eyes Galadriel pretty hard after she finds out about the whole Mirror thing.

Haven’t really thought much about the other Avari tribes, to be honest. The Hwenti are maybe #5 or even #6? I know they did eventually leave but only to move into the foothills of that eastern mountain range and become the first elves to encounter dwarves. Oh wait, actually the Kindi are #3, now that I remember I wrote that fic about them and the proto-Beorians.

…I really want to do my own take on that but I haven’t worked out enough of the Avari groups anything to do it yet.

[kazaera]

So first off, thank you super hard for your kind words re: being your inspiration, I am blushing super hard! <3 I’m so glad there are other people playing in the Avari corner and would love to hear more about Thranduil’s wife side-eyeing Galadriel for the Mirror. I totally get what you mean about it being hard to find fic for things outside the popular corners… like, recently I was looking for stuff about Arnor, and there’s almost. Nothing. At all? Same for the Kinstrife, too, and there’s other interesting stuff regarding the kings in Gondor? but zero fic. And like you say, very little for the early Rohirrim… Sigh.

Which is not even mentioning my wish that some people would address the iffy colonialist overtones of what’s happening with the Silvan population in Lórien and Mirkwood, or in general make Elven relations in the Third Age slightly more complicated than Imladris = Noldor, Mirkwood and Lórien = Sindar…

BUT HOLD ON A MOMENT HERE, were you the one who wrote that fic involving the Kindi as the first teachers of Men? OMG! I have been trying to find that fic again for ages because I read it years upon years ago and the idea sneakily crept into my own conception of the Kindi. I’ve been feeling guilty that I didn’t have the link or author to credit it! *goes searching*

[laurelsblue]

So it’s super convoluted but it started when I was wondering about what pre-Orome Quendi religion might have looked like and I remembered that bodies of water seemed to be important to a lot of pre-historic European peoples. Somehow that turned into Nen, who is a) the personification of Cuivienen (think Goldberry’s mother but a lake), b) a zombie, c) both of these things at once.  Also she’s Olwe’s mother-in-law. (This is why Elmo and Thingol avoided marrying people with mothers.)

Anyway so Nen (whatever she is) didn’t exactly take the whole drying up of Cuivienen as a result of the Valar’s war with Melkor well, and not just because of the peril it placed her existence in. Cue full-on eldritch abomination mode accompanied by some of her daughters. The Penni under Enel(ye) win the resulting war (known as the War of the Nameless One) but end up finally leaving Cuivienen as a result. (At some point during this is when the other Nelyar Avari group splinters off from them but I’m not sure which one that is yet.) Another result is the Penni’s extreme wariness of water-related ‘magic’ and Nen’s bloodline in general. And guess what Galadriel is? A great-granddaughter of Nen who uses water to channel her power sometimes. It’s no wonder Thranduil’s Penni wife has a lot of reservations about her. (Of course it cuts both ways, she gets up to a lot of stuff with the houseless that Galadriel doesn’t like.)

I have a lot of thoughts about early Arnor (pre-split into three kingdoms) but they’re kinda buried in my Arnorian queens series except for this. Perhaps I shouldn’t complain too much because I’m very good at having thoughts/fic ideas but terrible at actually writing anything.

Even for the later Rohirrim, there’s not much. Thengel and Morwen’s story in particular has so much potential…

Definitely. And by that point, those distinctions are pretty blurred anyway. I think there’s a lot of complicated stuff that could be going on under the surface with regards to the Nandor and whichever Avari group you think settled in Mirkwood (I go for the Penni personally), and how they might still consider themselves separate in some regards, but united (against the Sindar newcomers) in others. I do have the beginnings of a fic about the scenario where Galadriel and Celeborn are invited to rule post-Amroth’s death and who might have made that decision and why, but as usual it got stuck because I got more interested creating characters for it than actually writing it.

I was! I’m glad you liked it. Honestly I wish I was better at linguistics because the names in it need so much work. (It’s here by the way. It took me a while to find it too.) Also I headcanoned most of the Avari tribes were mixed Nelyar/Tatyar when I wrote it which I don’t any more.

[kazaera]

so this is all super cool I loooove the idea of Olwë’s wife as the daughter of a… Maia??… who later becomes this eldritch abomination thing and the War of the Nameless One and everyone side-eyeing Galadriel heavily. And it is kind of funny that we both envisage a Giant Penni War at Cuiviénen, in my case it was just Enel(yë) who went in the eldritch abomination direction and the whole thing happened a little later.

and I have never had much/any HC for Thranduil’s wife, but her being Avari would make TONS of sense. *contemplates busily*

I would totally like to see that fic if you ever continue it! Funnily enough, I have also been thinking about the origins of Galadriel and Celeborn ruling in Lórien - working on Elladan fic got me thinking about the Third Age, and I have this one fic-in-progress feat. him sneaking out in disguise as a wanderer from Laurelindórinand in order to catch Maglor for A Discussion, and also x3 I had this epic Nimrodel taking over idea that I decided was too AU to work more on but that I realised one could recycle in a more canon setting. Because my Nimrodel is in fact an ancient war general of the Penni and granddaughter or great-granddaughter of Enel(yë) who is Not OK With Amdir and Amroth just coming in and taking over, and from that perspective the song of Nimrodel looks a lot more like a planned assassination/disguised coup, and you can’t possibly tell me Galadriel didn’t know what happened… erm. anyway.

And here is a ME TOO UGH on linguistics. I am still fairly unhappy with almost all my Avarin name derivations and one of the reasons I’ve never posted the Luuszk fic on AO3 is that I want to come back and change the names around first. :|

[laurelsblue]

The more I think about Nen, the more possiblities I come up with for what exactly she is. Is she a Maia of Ulmo who settled down in Cuivienen really early? Is she whatever Goldberry’s mother is? Is she what happens when you keep chucking bodies in a lake in an universe where water has primordial aspects? All of the above somehow? Perhaps the idea I like the best that water is a mirror. You look at it, and it looks back at you. There was a swirl of Song in that lake, and through the early elves’ interactions with it, it became something more. (So maybe she was always an eldritch abomination in some respects.)

Enel(ye) dies in battle against orcs in my headcanon, possibly as part of a final stand on Amon Lanc. (Elmo dies with her, due to a complicated series of events related to Nen’s relationship with his wife.)

It really does. There’s a whole sort of arranged marriage to cement Oropher’s place in the hierarchy aspect to it in my mind. A ‘these newcomers might be weird but they could be useful to ally with’ thing for the Avari.

Oropher’s wife is also sort of Avari in my headcanon. Born and raised in the Falas and 100% considers herself Falathrim but her parents are actually Tatyarin Avari of some description. There’s a little bit of tension between her and her daughter-in-law over her resulting attitude to Avari.

I go with Amroth as G+C’s son which lends a slightly different flavour to the ruling Lorien thing, as does Celeborn being Denethor’s nephew. But again, the exact relationship between the Nandor of Lorien/Mirkwood and the Laiquendi probably needs more thought.

My few Nimrodel headcanons are mostly about what she does after getting lost, so I haven’t really thought about who she was to begin with.

It’s why Easterling stuff is so much easier. At least you can pick names in a replacement language for that.